Re: OCLC's Policy for WorldCat Records

From Tim Spalding:

"My guess is that OCLC is going to tighten its rules, requiring libraries to deny records to commercial
companies and to institutions that may share them with others. Non-commercial use will be broadened, but
with licensing terms forbidding resharing.
This will hit sites like LibraryThing and ISBNdb hard. We are not going to pay for access to records,
particularly records from the government-funded institutions that do most of OCLC's work.
And I suspect it will shut down the Open Library project, as they won't accept data unless it has no
restrictions on it."

If Tim is correct, this may also have ramifications for cataloging vendors and for-profit publishers
participating in a post-RDA cataloging world since much more linking of rescords would seem to be
required in that rareified environment.

Mike Tribby
Senior Cataloger
Quality Books Inc.
The Best of America's Independent Presses

mailto:mike.tribby@...

-----Original Message-----
From: AUTOCAT [mailto:AUTOCAT@...] On Behalf Of Tim Spalding
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 10:20 AM
To: AUTOCAT@...
Subject: Re: [ACAT] OCLC's Policy for WorldCat Records

My guess is that OCLC is going to tighten its rules, requiring libraries to deny records to commercial
companies and to institutions that may share them with others. Non-commercial use will be broadened, but
with licensing terms forbidding resharing.

This will hit sites like LibraryThing and ISBNdb hard. We are not going to pay for access to records,
particularly records from the government-funded institutions that do most of OCLC's work.

And I suspect it will shut down the Open Library project, as they won't accept data unless it has no
restrictions on it.

Best,
Tim

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